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Ancient Kush: the missing link?
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Child Of The KING: [QB] Why is their so much divison and hate spewed at each other over nonsense? Posters should be able to be civil with one another without the constant back and forth insult war. We are all learners on these forums. Why not discuss without the disparaging insults? While I aint really knowledgable on Kush or merowe, the topic is an fundamental need since to understand the people south of Egypt, is to understand AE better. Like I posted before Kushites were maybe not the people reagrded as Modern nubians, but are in fact probably the South Sudanese people. Also found this website that Talks about Ancient Kush or Ethiopia: [QUOTE]History of Early Ethiopia or Kush (13,000-7500 BC) The region known as Kush has been inhabited for several millennia. Royal Ontario Museum and University of Khartoum researchers found a "tool workshop" south of Dongola, Sudan with thousands of paleolithic axes on rows of stones, dating back 70,000 years. As early as 13,000 BC, ceremonial burial practices were taking place at Jebel Sahaba and Wadi Halfa in the northern part of modern-day Sudan (known to archaeologists as the "Qadan" period, 13,000-8,000 BC). At the Toshka site in modern-day "Lower Nubia," archaeologists have uncovered tombs where domesticated wild cattle were placed above human remains, indicative of the use of cattle in a ceremonial fashion. Circular tomb walls with above-ground mounds are further evidence of the beginnings of ceremonial burials. At other sites nearby, we can see the development of Ethiopian (better known as "Egyptian") civilization. At the Kadruka cemetery, spouted vessels were found, and the tombs at El Gaba were filled with jewelry, pottery, ostrich feathers, headrests, facial painting, etc.--all of which were present in "dynastic Egypt," and are still used today amongst different peoples of modern-day Ethiopia. The neolithic Sabu rock paintings even depict dynastic Egyptian-style boats. Just west of the city of Kerma lies the site of Busharia, where shards of pottery dating from 8000 to 9000 BC have been found. A nearby discovery at El-Barga shed light on foundations of round buildings, graves and pottery shards from 7,500 BC. Therefore Kushitic civilization began on the banks of the Nile over 15,000 years ago and was settled at least 55,000 years prior. Furthermore, based on the traditions of the first settlers and the artifacts found in this region, Kushitic civilization gave birth to that of so-called "Egypt" (see also: Nile Valley Civilization). [/QUOTE] [QUOTE] Ethiopia in Greek History (800 BC-200 AD). Few other nations are mentioned in ancient European literature as much as Ethiopia, and even fewer as highly esteemed. Ethiopians are first mentioned in the oldest of Greek texts, Homer's Iliad (circa 800 BC), as a place frequented by the Greek gods. Homer states, "...twelve for Jupiter's stay with the Ethiopians, at whose return Thetis prefers her petition" and "Zeus is at Ocean's river with Ethiopians, feasting, he and all the heaven-dwellers." In Homer's Odyssey (c. 800 BC), Poseiden also spends time in Ethiopia: "But Poseidon, the earthquake lord, making his return from Ethiopia where he had visited for a celebration in his honor..." Homer also tells us that an Ethiopian ruled Troy and Arabia: "Tithonus was the son of Laomedon, king of Troy and the Nymph Strymo. He was an extremely handsome youth, and when Eos (Dawn) first saw him, she fell in love with him and brought him to her palace by the stream of Ocean in Ethiopia. They had two children, Memnon and Emathion. Emathion became a king of Arabia...Memnon took a force of Ethiopians to Troy and died while fighting the Greeks" Herodotus (Histories, Book II, c. 440 BC) informs us that Ethiopians also jointly ruled over the Siwa Oasis: "Ammonians [Siwa Owasis], who are a joint colony of Egyptians and Ethiopians, speaking a language between the two..." [/QUOTE] [QUOTE]Herodotus describes their physical characteristics and provides great detail about the traditions of Ethiopians in his era, stating, "...and the men are taller, handsomer, and longer lived than anywhere else. The Ethiopians were clothed in the skins of leopards and lions, and had long bows made of the stem of the palm-leaf, not less than four cubits in length. On these they laid short arrows made of reed, and armed at the tip, not with iron, but with a piece of stone, sharpened to a point, of the kind used in engraving seals. They carried likewise spears, the head of which was the sharpened horn of an antelope; and in addition they had knotted clubs. When they went into battle they painted their bodies, half with chalk, and half with vermilion... and [/QUOTE] http://www.taneter.org/ethiopia.html [QUOTE] Development of Kush As Nubia to the south sought separation from Egypt and as Asian invasions of Northeast Alkebu-lan (Africa) increased, Egypt lost control of the Sudan. From 1000 BCE, Nubians began to build the independent state called Kush. Although the Kushites had been under the control of Egypt for more than 500 years, they eventually created their own identity. From 730 to 656, Kush invaded and controlled Egypt led by Pianki. Although Western writers give Pianki's successor Shabaka credit for establishing Kemet's 25th Dynasty, Pianki was the first true Kushite pharaoh of this era. The succeeding Nubian rulers were Taharqa and Tanutamon (Williams 115). Around 661, invading Assyrians drove Kush out of Lower Egypt. Even though Nubia still controlled Upper Egypt, the leaders decided to move their permanent headquarters south to the cities of Napata and Meroe. Their decision to move was strategic for three reasons. First, the land in the Ethiopian region was rich in both hardwood timber and iron ore. Hardwood timber was the key ingredient for the chemical process needed to smelt iron, which separated the chemically infused iron from the rock. Kush produced a class of skilled iron workers to make tools, household products, jewelry and weapons. They learned from their experiences in Egypt that it was imperative to construct a high level iron industry featuring the production of strong and reliable defense weapons. As a result, Kush became the leading iron producing nation in the world. Second, rainfall was plentiful on the Ethiopian plains, which was excellent for farming and grazing animals. Third, the location made trading across the Red Sea with India and China easier (Shillington 40). Kushite Culture Sometimes referred to as Meroites, Kushites developed their own language and writing system that replaced Egyptian language and Hieroglyphics. They created a type of alphabetic script around 653 BCE. It was not as sophisticated as the sign and symbol dominated Hieroglyphics. However, according to Chancellor Williams, Kushite writing featured "23 characters or letters with 17 consonants, 4 vowels and 2 signs of the syllable" (127). Even though Kushite writing was not as complicated to use as Hieroglyphics was, linguists today have been unable to decipher it. Kush had fabulous artistic development in other areas, including improvement on mathematical systems, the creation of various types of sculptures as well as an extraordinary amount of engravings, drawings and paintings. The artists often depicted the representation of their God, Apedemek, as a human with the head of a lion (Shillington 42). Kush’s artists created intricately crafted, finely painted luxury pottery for decoration and affect. In addition, they made beautifully designed architectural edifices, including some structures that resembled pyramids. [/QUOTE] https://suite.io/william-cook/2j1a2r1 KUSH, THE JEWEL OF NUBIA Reconnecting the Root System of African Civilization by Miriam Ma'at-Ka-Re Monges [IMG]http://www.africaworldpressbooks.com/catalog/9780865435294.jpg[/IMG] http://www.africaworldpressbooks.com/servlet/Detail?no=694 [QUOTE]“Those piles of ruins which you see in that narrow valley watered by the Nile, are the remains of opulent cities, the pride of the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia. … There a people, now forgotten, discovered while others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences. A race of men now rejected from society for their sable skin and frizzled hair, founded on the study of the laws of nature, those civil and religious systems which still govern the universe.” Count Volney [/QUOTE] [QUOTE] Now that we have straightened out ourselves on the issue of the classification of races, we may property turn to the main subject matter of this essay, i.e., the ancient Ethiopians and their widespread influence on the early history of civilization. In discussing the origin of civilization in the ancient Near East, Professor Charles Seignobos in his History of Ancient Civilization, notes that the first civilized inhabitants of the Nile and Tigris-Euphrates valleys, were a dark-skinned people with short hair and prominent lips; and that they are referred to by some scholars as Cushites (Ethiopians), and as Hamites by others. This ancient civilization of the Cushites, out of which the earliest cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia grew, was not confined to the Near East. Traces of it have been found all over the world. Dr. W. J. Perry refers to it as the Archaic Civilization. Sir Grafton Elliot Smith terms it the Neolithic Heliolithic Culture of the Brunet-Browns. Mr. Wells alludes to this early civilization in his Outline of History, and dates its beginnings as far back as 15,000 years B.C. “This peculiar development of the Neolithic culture,” says Mr. Wells, “which Elliot Smith called the Heliolithic (sun-stone) culture, included many or all of the following odd practices: (1) Circumcision, (2) the queer custom of sending the father to bed when a child is born, known as Couvade, (3) the practice of Massage, (4) the making of Mummies, (5) Megalithic monuments (i.e. Stonehenge), (6) artificial deformation of the heads of the young by bandages, (7) Tattooing, (8) religious association of the Sun and the Serpent, and (9) the use of the symbol known as the Swastika for good luck. … Elliot Smith traces these associated practices in a sort of constellation all over this great Mediterranean / Indian Ocean-Pacific area. Where one occurs, most of the others occur. They link Brittany with Borneo and Peru. But this constellation of practices does not crop up in the primitive home of Nordic or Mongolian peoples, nor does it extend southward much beyond equatorial Africa. … The first civilizations in Egypt and the Euphrates-Tigris valley probably developed directly out of this widespread culture.” (Outline of History, pp. 141–143). [/QUOTE] [QUOTE] The traditions concerning Memnon are interesting as well as instructive. He was claimed as a king by the Ethiopians, and identified with the Pharaoh Amunoph or Amenhotep, by the Egyptians. A fine statue of him is located in the British Museum, in London. Charles Darwin makes a reference to this statue on his Descent of Man which is well worth reproducing: “When I looked at the statue of Amunoph III, I agreed with two officers of the establishment, both competent judges, that he had a strongly marked Negro type of features.” The features of Akhnaton (Amennhotep IV), are even more Negroid than those of his illustrious predecessor. That the earliest Egyptians were African Ethiopians (Nilotic Negroes), is obvious to all unbiased students of oriental history. Breasted’s claim that the early civilized inhabitants of the Nile Valley and Western Asia were members of a Great White Race, is utterly false, and is supported by no facts whatsoever. A similar racial bias is shown by Elliot Smith in his work, The Ancient Egyptians and Their Influence Upon the Civilization of Europe, p. 30, New York & London, 1911. “Not a few writers,” says he, “like the traveler Volney in the 18th century, have expressed the belief that the ancient Egyptians were Negroes, or at any rate strongly Negroid. In recent times even a writer so discriminating as Ripley usually is has given his adhesion to this view.” (The writers referred to here, are Count Volney, the French Orientalist and Professor William Z. Ripley, of Harvard University, an eminent American Anthropologist.) Professor Smith is convinced that these men are wrong, because he holds that there is a “profound gap that separates the Negro from the rest of mankind, including the Egyptian.” (Ancient Egyptians, p. 74.) Another English scholar, Philip Smith, is far more rational in discussing this point: No people have bequeathed to us so many memorials of its form complexion and physiognomy as the Egyptians. … If we were left to form an opinion on the subject by the description of the Egyptians left by the Greek writers we should conclude that they were, if not Negroes, at least closely akin to the Negro race. That they were much darker in coloring than the neighboring Asiatics; that they had their frizzled either by nature or art; that their lips were thick and projecting, and their limbs slender, rests upon the authority of eye-witnesses who had traveled in the country and who could have had no motive to deceive. … The fullness of the lips seen in the Sphinx of the Pyramids and in the portraits of the kings is characteristic of the Negro. (The Ancient History of the East, pp. 25-26, London, 1881.) We read of Memnon, King of Ethiopia, in Greek mythology, to be exact in Homer’s Iliad, where he leads an army of Elamites and Ethiopians to the assistance of King Priam in the Trojan War. His expedition is said to have started from the African Ethiopia and to have passed through Egypt on the way to Troy. According to Herodotus, Memnon was the founder of Susa, the chief city of the Elamites. “There were places called Memnonia,” asserts Professor Rawlinson, “supposed to have been built by him both in Egypt and at Susa; and there was a tribe called Memnones at Moroe. Memnon thus unites the eastern with the western Ethiopians, and the less we regard him as an historical personage the more must we view him as personifying the ethnic identity of the two races.” (Ancient Monarchies, Vol. I, Chap. 3.) The ancient peoples of Mesopotamia are sometimes called the Chaldeans, but this is inaccurate and confusing. Before the Chaldean rule in Mesopotamia, there were the empires of the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians. The earliest civilization of Mesopotamia was that of the Sumerians. They are designated in the Assyrio-Babylonian inscriptions as the black-heads or black-faced people, and they are shown on the monuments as beardless and with shaven heads. This easily distinguishes them from the Semitic Babylonians, who are shown with beards and long hair. From the myths and traditions of the Babylonians we learn that their culture came originally from the south. Sir Henry Rawlinson concluded from this and other evidence that the first civilized inhabitants of Sumer and Akkad were immigrants from the African Ethiopia. John D. Baldwin, the American Orientalist, on the other hand, claims that since ancient Arabia was also known as Ethiopia, they could have just as well come from that country. These theories are rejected by Dr. II. R. Hall, of the Dept. Of Egyptian & Assyrian Antiquities of the British Museum, who contends that Mesopotamia was civilized by a migration from India. “The ethnic type of the Sumerians, so strongly marked in their statues and reliefs,” says Dr. Hall, “was as different from those of the races which surrounded them as was their language from those of the Semites, Aryans, or others; they were decidedly Indian in type. The face-type of the average Indian of today is no doubt much the same as that of his Dravidian race ancestors thousands of years ago. … And it is to this Dravidian ethnic type of India that the ancient Sumerian bears most resemblance, so far as we can judge from his monuments. … And it is by no means improbable that the Sumerians were an Indian race which passed, certainly by land, perhaps also by sea, through Persia to the valley of the Two Rivers. It was in the Indian home (perhaps the Indus valley) that we suppose for them that their culture developed. … On the way they left the seeds of their culture in Elam. … There is little doubt that India must have been one of the earliest centers of human civilization, and it seems natural to suppose that the strange un-Semitic, un-Aryan people who came from the East to civilize the West were of Indian origin, especially when we see with our own eyes how very Indian the Sumerians were in type.” (The Ancient History of the Near East, pp. 173–174, London, 1916.) Hall is opposed in his theory of Sumerian origins by Dr. W. J. Perry, the great anthropologist, of the University of London. “The Sumerian stories or origins themselves tell a very different tale,” Perry points out, “for from their beginnings the Sumerians seem to have been in touch with Egypt. Some of their early texts mention Dilmun, Magan and Meluhha. … Dilmun was the first settlement that was made by the god Enki, who was the founder of Sumerian civilization. … Magan was famous among the Sumerians as a place whence they got diorite and copper, Meluhha as a place whence they got gold. Dilmun has been identified with some place or other in the Persian Gulf, perhaps the Bahrein Islands, perhaps a land on the eastern shore of the Gulf. … In a late inscription of the Assyrians it is said that Magan and Meluhha were the archaic names for Egypt and Ethiopia, the latter being the south-western part of Somaliand that lay opposite.” (The Growth of Civilization, pp. 60–61, 2nd Edition, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1937, Published by Penguin Books, Ltd.) [/QUOTE] http://abundancechild.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/kushthe-origin-of-civilization-a-summary-of-various-perspectives/ ^Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire Review This is an Forum that discusses Egypt and Kush from an poster named Asante90 its a good read on just where this fight is now, You can really see the hate that whites have for the truth: Sub Saharan origins for pharaohs (new DNA studies) http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=492254 According to Kushite (Nubian) beliefs, before creation, the world was all covered with water.[1] Then a mound of earth has risen out of the water. On top of this mound, Atum the first god on earth, was born. Atum then gave birth to Shu, the first man on earth, and Tefnut, the first woman goddess. Shu and Tefnu married and gave birth to Geb (the god of Earth) and Nut (god of the Skies). Geb and Nut then were responsible for giving birth to the most important gods in Nubia, Osiris (god of the pharaohs) and Seth (god of devastation), and Isis (god of motherhood) and Nephthys (protector of the dead). Atum signified the concept of creation. Atum was also believed to have created the heavens and earth. He was portrayed as an old man and sometimes with a ram head in connection to Amon. Re was the most publicly worshiped form of Atum, though the cult of Re emerged as a universal god. The symbol of Re is a sun disk, which is found to be pictured on chapels of pyramids as well as on temples. http://www.africanbelief.com/ The Economic Importance of Nubia By Peter A. Piccione © 1995. All rights reserved. (from Joseph Schaffner Library Collection-Northwestern University Library http://www.library.nwu.edu/class/history/B94/) -quote- Exploitation by Egypt Precious Metals and Stone. Egyptian interests in Nubia were always driven by economics. The one factor that chiefly characterized Egypt's relationship with Nubia through most of their history was exploitation. Nubia's most important resource for Egypt was precious metal, including gold and electrum. The gold mines of Nubia were located in certain valleys and mountains on either side of the Nile River, although the most important mining center was located in the Wadi Allaqi. That valley extended eastward into the mountains near Qubban (about 107 km. south of Elephantine). Nubia was also an important source of valuable hard stone and copper, both of which were necessary for Egypt's monumental building projects. Trading in African Goods. Especially important for Egypt was that Nubia was also a corridor to central Africa and a point for the trans-shipment of exotic goods from that region, including: frankincense, myrrh, "green gold," ivory, ebony and other exotic woods, precious oils, resins and gums, panther and leopard skins, monkeys, dogs, giraffes, ostrich feathers and eggs, as well as pygmies (who became important to Egyptian religious rituals). In the Old Kingdom, the Egyptians regularly penetrated as far as the Second Cataract to barter for these products which were coming down through the upper Nile Valley (viz., the expeditions of Harkhuf, Hekayib, Mekhu and Sabni). Manpower. Nubia was also an important source of manpower and labor for the Egyptians. The Palermo Stone records that early in the Fourth Dynasty, King Snefru led a military campaign into Nubia reputedly to crush a "revolt" there (the Egyptians considered all enemies--whether foreign or domestic--as "rebels" against the natural order). According to that text, he captured 200,000 head of cattle and 7,000 prisoners, all of whom were deported to Egypt as laborers on royal building projects. While some archaeologists argue that this campaign was limited to Lower Nubia, others note that the amount of 7,000 is rather high for a country that was fairly depopulated at the time. If the number was not inflated as royal propaganda, then Snefru could have penetrated into Upper Nubia as far as the Land of Yam and made his conquests there. http://www.thenubian.net/nubold.php http://www.nathanielturner.com/originofcivilizationfromthecushites.htm This is an PDF OF nubia over 200 pages: Introduction The Nuba are a group of peoples who share a common geography in Sudan’s Southern Kordofan Province, known as Jibal al-Nuba or Nuba Mountains. The origins of most Nuba peoples are obscure, but there is no doubt that they are Africans. They arrived to the area from various directions and in the course of thousands of years. Today there are over fifty Nuba tribes, who speak as many different languages. Their combined number is estimated at 2.5 million people. Until the Egyptian occupation of Sudan during the nineteenth century, most Nuba tribes lived relatively isolated. Contiguous events that shaped their history are the short but extremely violent rule of the Mahdi and his successor, and colonial rule by the British. Sudan took its independence in 1956 and since the 1960s the Nuba have been at odds with their successive National Governments. From 1987 to 2001 the Nuba Mountains were a battle zone in one of the civil wars that continue to devastate the country. Traditionally the Nuba are farmers, but they are now employed in all segments of society. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, labour migrants have formed large Nuba communities in the large cities of North Sudan, like El Obeid, Khartoum and Port Sudan. In the 1980s and 1990s, the migrants were joined by hundreds of thousands of people who fled from violence. Since fighting in the Nuba Mountains was officially ended in January 2002, many refugees are returning home. The following brief history aims at providing a broad perspective on the history of the Nuba. I have drawn from many different sources, and consulted scientists considered to be expert in their field for the more remote history. For the most recent history I have relied largely on interviews with Nuba who were closely involved in the developemts leading to the war in the Nuba Mountains and eventually the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2004. I. The name Nuba For centuries, the geographical area where the Nuba tribes live has been known as Dar Nuba: the land of the Nuba. The Tegali Kingdom (a truly Nuba kingdom indeed) was known on its own accord, as were several individual hills, but to the Arab people living around the area, the people of the Mountains were all Nuba. The Europeans, relying on the Arabs for information, used the same name. Until very recently the Nuba people themselves would rather use their tribal name and many didn’t really consider themselves to be Nuba. In the words of Yousif Kuwa Mekki: It is one of the funniest things: when you were in the Nuba Mountains, you just knew your own tribe. We for example were Miri. So if we were asked: "Who are the Nuba?" we would try to say: "The other tribes - but not us." Only when we came out of the Nuba Mountains, to the north or south or west, we learned that we are all Nuba.1 Please note the word ‘try’ here: linguist and anthropologist A.C. Stevenson noticed that: Some of the more educated are also shy of applying the term to themselves, they tend to reserve it for those they think of as rustic hill-dwellers: for them ‘Nuba’ is the reverse of a status symbol.2 An old theory supposes a relationship between the word ‘Nuba’ and the Archaic Egyption nbw [nebu], meaning ‘gold’. In ancient times the land south of Egypt produced a lot of gold and so the people were gold diggers; or the ‘land of gold’ would be called Nubia (which it wasn’t) and its people Nuba… Brief: lot’s of charming nonsense.3 And then there is A.J. Arkell’s expalantion: The name of the Nuba apparently comes, like so many other tribal names in the Sudan (Berti, Berta, Burgu, etc-) from a word in their own language which means 'slaves'.4 Surely there is a connection: the Nuba were harassed by slave raiders for many centuries and to the Arabs ‘Nuba’ became nearly synonymous with ‘slave’. But since Arkell doesn’t mention in which of the many Nuba languages their name means ‘slave’, there is little we can say about his theory, except quoting anthropologist S.F. Nadel: I will not attempt to trace the origin of this name or to speculate on its original meaning. Suffice to say that in none of the groups which I have studied is the term Nuba indigenous […]5 II. Kingdoms on the Nile 1. Nubia There are Nuba and there are Nubians and this is cause for great confusion. The Nuba are the different peoples living in the Nuba Mountains in Southern Kordofan. The Nubians today are a people who live along the Nile at the border between Egypt and Sudan. Many of them were relocated when the Nasser Dam was built. The Nubians are considered to be descendants of the great Nubian Kingdoms of Kush; Meroe; Nobatia; Makuria (Dongola) or Alodia (Alwa). I will first run through Nubian history and then turn to the present insights on any connections between the Nuba of Kordofan and the Nubian Kingdoms. The word ‘Nubia’ is used to describe the land along the Nile south of Egypt; divided into a ‘lower Nubia’ for the area between the first and the second cataract, and an ‘upper Nubia’ for the land beyond the second cataract. Historically however there never was any kingdom or tribe or civilisation by the name Nubia. The use of ‘Nubia’ for the region seems to originate with European atlas makers of the early renaissance who drew maps based on the work of the astrologist and geographer Claudius Ptolemaeus (90-168 AD).6 The earliest Egyptian kings (pre-dynastic and those of the first dynasties) referred to the people to their south as Ta Seti or ‘people of the bow’, for their skill as archers. The Ta Seti were well organised, and their civilisation was not unlike that of the first Egyptians. They disappeared however. By the Sixth Dynasty (ca. 2323-2150 BC), Egyptian references to Wawat, Irtjet, and Setju seem to identify different small kingdoms in Lower Nubia. They also mention Yam, a kingdom in upper Nubia. There was trade between Yam and Egypt. While the Middle Kingdom replaced the Old Kingdom in Egypt (ca. 2134-2040 BC), political changes also took place in Upper Nubia. ‘Yam’ disappeared from Egyptian texts and was replaced by Kush, which the Egyptians described as ‘vile’ or ‘contemptible’. Kush became a major power in the south and it took over Lower Nubia around 1700 BC. Chances turned again and the Egyptians of the New Kingdom (c.1532-1070 BC) crushed the Kush kingdom and its capital Kerma. By the end of the reign of Thutmose I in 1520 BC, all of Upper Nubia had been annexed. The Egyptians built a new administrative and religious centre at Napata; the Nubian elite adopted the worship of Egyptian gods and the hieroglyphic writing system. This way a lot of the ancient Egyptian culture was kept alive for many centuries while the power of Egypt slowly declined. By 800 BC Egypt had fragmented into rival states, but in 747 BC the Kushite king Piankhy (Piyi) marched north from his capital at Napata and reunified Egypt. Kushite kings ruled both Nubia and Egypt until the invasion of an Assyrian army in 667 BC. The Nubian king fled back to Napata and was defeated decisively in 664 BC. In 656 BC Psamtik I, founder of the 26th Saite Dynasty, reunited Egypt. In 591 BC his successor Psamtik II invaded Kush and sacked and burned Napata. The kings of Kush moved their capital to Meroë, where they continued to build temples to Nubian and Egyptian gods. The kings were buried in pyramid tombs. Meroë developed a new script and began to write in the Meroitic language, which has yet to be fully deciphered. Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 BC. His empire was short lived and Egypt once again became a kingdom, under the Ptolemy Dynasty (306-30 BC). The Ptolemies were of Greek descent and in official records the people to the south are now referred to as Aethiopians: Greek for ‘burned faces’. This name, given to them by the first great historian Herodotus, was kept by the Romans, who took control over Egypt in 30 BC. During the reign of the Ptolemies, Meroe prospered. The initial relationship with the Romans wasn’t that good. According to geographer Strabo (63 BC-24 AD), in 24 BC: [the Aethiopians] attacked the Thebaïs and the garrison of the three cohorts at [Aswan], and by an unexpected onset took [Aswan] and Elephantine and Philae, and enslaved the inhabitants, and also pulled down the statues of Caesar.7 In 23 BC the Roman governor of Egypt, Petronius, first compelled them to flee to Pselchis, an Ethiopian city, and sent ambassadors demanding the return of what they had taken, and the reasons why they had begun the war. The Aethiopians didn’t respond, so in 22 BC Petronius attacked them at Pselchis. Defeating the Aethiopians there, he advanced to Premnis. He took the city and continued to the capital of the Aethiopians at Napata, which he sacked. After some more hostilities, the Aethiopians and the Romans came to a peace agreement, and trade between them flourished for several centuries. Before turning to the Nuba, I want to stress once more that wherever Nubia is mentioned, we must remember that there are no historic sources from antiquity that use this name. For the word Nuba, it’s a different story. http://www.occasionalwitness.com/content/nuba/01History01.htm http://www.centerformaat.com/files/NUBIAN-PHARAOHS-AND-MEROITIC-KINGS.pdf [/QB][/QUOTE]
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